Home Career Filmography
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)

The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)

Cate Blanchett as: Florence Zimmerman

Directed by: Eli Roth
Selected Cast: Jack Black, Owen Vaccaro, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sunny Suljic, Kyle MacLachlan
Written by: Eric Kripke (Based on John Bellairs’ book of the same title)
Release Year: 2018
Genre: Fantasy | Comedy
MPAA Rating: PG

The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead.

Related Images

View more images at the gallery.

Behind the scenes; DVD gag reel

Related Videos

The videos after the trailer are playlists of deleted scenes, alternate ending, DVD extras, featurettes, premieres, and selected interviews with the cast, just click on the playlist icon/thumbnails to see the other videos in it.

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“A huge draw, apart from loving the book as a child, was to work with Eli Roth. It’s those unusual, unexpected jusxtapositions that I find really enticing. And given his history- as a horror director, the fact that he was asked to make a family film, I thought that was going to be something. I like magic, and the idea of playing a with whose magic was broken I found quite touching.” (The New Zealand Herald, September 2018)

Quotes from Others

Eli Roth:
— On making a PG-rated film: “There was this world of PG scary movies that I just feel isn’t done anymore. It feels like kids’ movies now are either superhero movies and animated movies. And while that’s great, there isn’t a movie that if you love scary movies, you can take your kids to.”
— On the cast: “You know, I think that Jack Black is our generation’s Robin Williams. I really think he’s like, when Robin Williams just started doing Dead Poets Society and Awakenings. He’s like an Oscar nominated, Oscar winning actor. Good Will Hunting. But he’s also doing Mrs. Doubtfire, which is just as brilliant. That’s Jack. He’s doing Bernie, he’s doing Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, but he’s also doing Jumanji. He’s brilliant in all of them. Cate really respects Jack as an actor. And obviously Jack respects Cate as an actor, but he thought she’s really, really funny. So, this playful side of her is starting to come out at this point in her career. She’s kind of done it all. So, she’s having fun. So, what we saw was, Jack brought out the best comedy in Cate and Kate brought out the best drama in Jack. And what I loved about Owen was, Owen is so strong at both of them. I’d seen him in Daddy’s Home. And a lot of it is just kind of reacting and doing jokes. But this, he has to really carry the movie, and be sad. And we see the whole movie through Lewis’ eyes. And I remember shooting that first thing with the backpack, where he comes in, and he’s like, off the bus and looking. We had a whole opening that’s on the DVD, where it’s the house a year earlier. Where Isaac does the spell, which we use in the flashback. But I was like, “No. We should see– This whole thing is Lewis training. We’ve got to start it with Owen.””

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in USA.
The film had its world premiere in London on 5 September 2018.
Eli Roth: appears as Comrade Ivan in the black and white “Captain Midnight” scene that Lewis sees on the wall. He is also the voice-over on the school’s PA.
Cate Blanchett’s youngest son, Ignatius Martin Upton, had a cameo in the film, in the ice cream shop film.
Cate Blanchett, Jack Black and Eli Roth would reunite few years later in Borderlands (2024).